Gameplay

Like many other real-time strategy games, Age of Mythology is based on building towns, gathering resources, creating armies, and ultimately destroying enemy units and buildings. In this way, players are able to defeat and conquer rival towns and civilizations. Players advance their tribe through four "Ages": starting in the Archaic Age, the player may upgrade to the Classical Age, Heroic Age, and, finally, the Mythic Age. Each upgrade to a higher Age unlocks new units and technologies for the player, which strengthens their town. Conversely, upgrading requires a large amount of resources to be paid, and certain buildings to be built.

There are three playable cultures in Age of Mythology: the Greeks, Egyptians, and Norse.

Each culture contains three civilizations, based around a "major god" such as Zeus, Ra or Odin. The player chooses a major god before the game begins, then, every time they advance to the next age, they choose one of two "minor gods", such as Bast or Hel. These gods are generally less significant deities in the mythos than the major ones. All gods have unique god powers, special spell-like abilities that typically damage an opponent or benefit the caster in some way, plus unique technologies and myth units.

There are four major resources in Age of Mythology: food, wood, gold and favor (unlike in the previous Age games stone is not used). These resources are chiefly used to train units, construct buildings, and research technologies. Civilian units — namely, Greek villagers, Norse gatherers and dwarves, and the Egyptian laborers, and fishing ships — are used to gather resources. These Worker units can gather food by Hunting animals, gathering berries, harvesting livestock, farming and fishing. Wood is gathered only by chopping down trees, and gold can be gathered by mining at gold mines or from trade. Players can research technologies that increase the rate of gathering these resources. Favor is acquired in different ways by different cultures. Greek players gain favor by having villagers pray at Temples, Egyptian players earn it by building Monuments, and Norse players receive it by fighting, or by possessing heroes. Resources can be exchanged at a player's Market.